Tolling I-90 is the wrong way to raise money, and the reasons are not correct. If you need to pay for the new bridge, do the following:

1. Toll the new bridge, and put a time limit on the tolls like other bridges in Washington’s history.

2. Raise the gas tax by a bit so we all bear the burden equally, and designate funds for bridge payments and nothing else!

3. Resist the urge to play social nanny by doing things that make driving more difficult/expensive. The market and your efforts to improve public transportation will take care of that.

4. Rebuild confidence in the state’s promises to use publicly generated funds for promised specific reasons without later diversion. The people remember and you should be ashamed for not doing it.

5. The toll you propose is a tax with another name, is forever, and hits the frequent users disproportionately worse.

6. One reason given, “relieving congestion on I-90,” is like drinking a diuretic to relieve thirst.

Paul Calderon